Wednesday, 10 July 2013

This TED talk by Eric X. Li describes the Chinese system of government and outlines why he thinks it is meritocratic, adaptable and legitimate. In short it is because the Party develops competency by promoting those that have done well managing at the local level. In addition it uses surveys to gauge public opinion. It provides fascinating insight.
While it's hard to argue with the enormous progress that China has made, I'm not sure it can be attributed to competent political management. It seems to me that it is more likely that a reduction in political management, liberating, empowering and motivating everyone, has lead to success. That's a free market argument. I suspect that economics trumps culture and culture trumps democracy (how else do you avoid a tyranny of the majority if not by a liberal culture?). But a single party may have a singularity of purpose that rarely exists in a democracy or free market. The Party may have a national strategy in support of their goal, whatever it may be. The goal could be egalitarian and transparent, such as raising the quality of life of everyone in China, or combative and opaque, such as taking control of world resources. Transparent democracy wouldn't work for the latter as target countries would take umbrage, but Interactive Democracy could still work in a single party state.

Yet Eric's focus on competency seems virtuous. The problem is, who or how do we decide who is competent? I doubt if the electorate can easily judge: surely you have to be competent yourself to judge if someone else is competent. Liking someone is different. Maybe one answer is to measure key performance indicators - a type of technocratic government that I also have sympathy with. Accurate data is important for good debates, suggestions and innovations and crucial for Interactive Democracy, too; inaccurate data and outright lies degrade democracy.

Tuesday, 9 July 2013

Ed Milliband is seeking to disentangle the Labour Party's financial links with the unions. He proposes that the automatic contributions from union members should become an option. Perhaps he hopes that this will allow the Labour Party to engage more directly with union members, circumventing the union leaders and diluting their power. It highlights the funding bias of political parties in Britain.

In her article on the subject, Polly Toynbee writes
"... democracy can't function with only 1.1% of the population participating. Parties need members and the clean money they bring."

I suspect that Interactive Democracy would boost political participation in many ways, including recruiting more party members. But it also encourages wealthy political donors to spend their money on persuading the electorate of the benefits of their views and is therefore far more transparent than today's shadowy world of political puppet masters.

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This site seeks to contribute to the debate on improving democracy. The proposed "Interactive Democracy" system utilises Information Technology to allow anyone to suggest a policy by ePetition (Ideas Engine). Those with sufficient support would be refined by the elected Parliament, taking into account similar and opposing proposals, to form laws to be ratified by national referendum. The elected government is then responsible for implementing the new law or directive. Modern technology can facilitate this in a secure and cost effective manner. It can also enhance the debate by enabling the "pros" and "cons" to be aired and by allowing voters to pose questions.
This system recognises that today's politicians have no mechanism for reliably discovering what the majority of their constituents think on any one issue and they may also be confounded in their ability to vote on their constituents behalf by the power of the party whips.
Comments and questions are welcome.
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